Chrysler Building

Interesting facts

Van Alen sued Walter Chrysler for his unpaid architect's fee and won, but the lawsuit hurt his reputation so badly that he received few major commissions afterwards.

At the 1931 Beaux-Arts Ball in New York, William Van Alen appeared in a costume of the Chrysler Building itself.

The tower began as the Reynolds Building of developer William H. Reynolds; Chrysler bought the plot, lease, plans and architect in October 1928 for over $2.5 million.

Its gleaming cladding was the first use in an American project of the so-called 18-8 stainless steel, made with 18 percent chromium and 8 percent nickel.

The steel frame climbed at about four floors a week, yet no worker died during the steelwork.

Builders used 391,881 rivets for the steel skeleton and around 3.8 million bricks for its non-load-bearing walls.

The land beneath the skyscraper has belonged to the Cooper Union, the New York college of art and engineering, since 1902.

From 1930 to 1945 a public observation deck called the Celestial operated on the 71st floor.

The lifts were designed to travel at 900 feet per minute, faster than the 700-foot limit New York allowed at the time.

The building has its own ZIP code, 10174, one of only about 41 Manhattan buildings with a postal code of their own.

Why it is worth it

The Chrysler Building is the purest expression of the optimism New York built for itself at the end of the 1920s. It was designed by William Van Alen and paid for by Walter P. Chrysler out of his own pocket, as an investment for his children rather than as a headquarters for his car company. Work started in January 1929 and the building opened in May 1930, sixteen months later, with 77 floors and a height of 1,046 feet (319 metres). For eleven months it was the tallest building in the world, and the first structure of any kind to pass 1,000 feet.

The height came with a famous piece of theatre. Van Alen was racing his former partner H. Craig Severance, whose bank tower at 40 Wall Street was going up downtown. Instead of revealing his final height, Van Alen had a 125-foot spire, the "vertex", assembled in secret inside the crown, and on 23 October 1929 it was hoisted out through the top and riveted in place in about an hour and a half, leaving his rival suddenly second. The Empire State Building overtook both in 1931, but the Chrysler kept what really mattered: the most beloved skyline silhouette in the city.

That silhouette is the crown. Seven terraced arches, each pierced by triangular windows, radiate like the spokes of a wheel and are clad in Nirosta stainless steel, which catches the light at sunrise and sunset. Lower down, the building makes open jokes about its patron's business: the 31st-floor setback carries giant replicas of 1929 Chrysler radiator caps and a frieze of stylised hubcaps, and from the 61st floor steel eagles lean out over Lexington Avenue, the building's celebrated gargoyles.

Inside, the lobby is one of the great Art Deco interiors of New York: walls of African red granite, lights banded in Belgian blue marble and Mexican amber onyx, and a vast ceiling mural by Edward Trumbull, "Transport and Human Endeavor". The doors and cabs of its elevators are works of wood marquetry in their own right. The private Cloud Club once occupied the 66th to 68th floors; today the upper storeys are offices, and only the lobby is open to visitors. The building has been a New York City landmark since 1978.

Getting there

The Chrysler Building stands at 405 Lexington Avenue, on the corner of 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, about 1 km east of Times Square. LaGuardia Airport (LGA) is about 9 km away. The Grand Central–42nd Street subway station, served by several lines, connects directly to the building, and Grand Central Terminal is a block away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Chrysler Building is a 1,046-foot-tall (319 m), Art Deco skyscraper in the East Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Located at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, it is the tallest steel-framed brick building in the world. It was both the world's first supertall skyscraper and the world's tallest building for 11 months after its completion in 1930. As of 2019, the Chrysler is the 13th-tallest building in the city, tied with The New York Times Building.

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Chrysler Building

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia